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Balderdash
My chosen word: Balderdash meaning senseless, stupid, or exaggerated talk or writing; nonsense. I love this word. I love the sound of it as it rolls off the tongue; I love the fact that it is tied up with Britishness; I love using it in the way that it was meant, to say in one word "I don't know what you're talking about, you absolute buffoon", although that sentence in itself is one that makes me smile. When researching the word, the internet also stated this: "Balderdash is a rather out-of-date and archaic word now, with very British overtones. The sort of word a P.G. Wodehouse character might use. Use it in a light-hearted way, therefore, and about something that's pretty trivial." I take umbrage at the "rather out-of-date and archaic" description of this magnificent word. It may not be in general use but I'm keeping it alive and will continue to spout it at every available opportunity.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Poets
The Past Comes Forward
Luke It's been years since I've seen Matt. Things were never the same after that day. How could it be? Ah, we still hung around together, connected by a shared secret and sorrow but the strings connecting us were never as tight. We were sworn but we were scared, suspicious of the hold we each had over the other. Who would break first? It was like a high stakes poker game, all the time. Believe me, there were times I wanted to tell, when the nightmares struck and my mum asked "What is it, Luke?" but whenever I was tempted, I remembered the bruises on Mark's arm.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Fiction
Camera - Found
I came across the camera by accident. I was in the back of Mum's wardrobe, looking for her shoe horn, like she'd asked me to, when I found this black bag, a loose cover containing something and wondered what it was. I took it out and had a good look at it. I never remembered Mum with it although we all used phones to take photos now, never a camera anyway.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Fiction
Luke and the Photo
My hands are shaking as I hold the photo. I don't need to be reminded of this. I sit with it every day, its toad-like presence: dark, watching, ready to leap, blinking stoically day-in day-out. I can feel it getting twitchy now. I want to squash it.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Fiction
Bethan
I try not to relive that day but it's difficult not to when the anniversary of it comes around year after year. The loss comes rushing in like water through a weakened crack in a pipe. Most days, I manage to hold it back, although it's pressure is always there, pushing at me.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Fiction
Stream
I don't know how to write stream of consciousness poetry because stream of consciousness to me just means writing what comes into your head as you are thinking it and stream implies that this should be continuous, like a flow that just keeps going with no breaks or stops or anything and I have real trouble with this because I dislike the disorder and where it puts me. For me, poems have form and this is formless and not poetic and not anything really other than the ramblings of me, on my computer on a wet, grey day in semi-rural England, having just eaten a really scrummy lunch of paoched egg on toast on seeded bread. I love seeded bread, I had it for breakfast as well although it was with butter and marmalade and it was scrum - diddly - umptious. I don't know why I'm writing about that. Yes, I do. It's because this is stream of consciousness and that is what this is and it's not very interesting is it? And this is why I'm struggling, because I've read loads of other people's stuff and they all read really well about cats and rhythms and other cerebral stuff but I try and I just can't do it because it just doesn't feel real for me to construct something like that. That's the problem. I can't reconcile the idea of a stream with something that has form. Even all the punctuation that I'm putting in is making my skin itch because it's providing form and my thoughts aren't punctuated. I don't have cartoon bubbles appearing in my head to tell me how something should be said: where the stresses should go or whether it's funny or not. They just are and they just come and then I just go with whatever my brain conjured up in that moment and thinking about that, that's pretty cool isn't it because there's all this electrical process going on (I don't really know how my brain works - Gerard, enlighten me please) in this big pink thing, or is it grey? Poirot talks about little grey cells. I don't know. Anyway, this isn't a medical dissertation so I suppose it doesn't really matter, although I do like to be as accurate as I can. I'll await Gerard's advices. That's Gerard on here, Vocal. I've got to hope he reads this now. I don't know where I was. I've gone down the rabbit-hole, Alice-style. What am I doing? This is just rambling. And yet, I feel this is more true to the brief. I feel like this is a stream, even though it's a fucking awful one but looking at it on the page, it is just me, telling you my thoughts as they come and unfiltering it and this looks like some sort of arty shite which someone would applaud for its originality even though it is banal and so uninteresting. I'm having a James Joyce Ulysses or more likely Emperor's New Clothes moment here. I mean, who are you to compare yourself to James Joyce? I mean, that's a bit up yourself. You know, that's reminded me of Virginia Woolf too and wasn't she one for stream-of-consciousness? I seem to remember that from my English degree, many moons ago. We went to my old university the other day and I barely recognised it. I had this image of it in my head and it just wasn't that anymore. It made me feel old but not sad because if there's one thing that I know about living, it's that everything changes. But you! Oh no, now I've got Take That in my head and I've still not got the ironing done and now I've been interrupted by TikTok playing in the background on my son's phone.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Confessions
